


Absolute Zero

by Cerauno



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Fanfiction Based on Canon, Gen, Graphic Depictions of War, Imprisonment, Pre-Canon, Prequel, Rehabilitation, Secondhand Accounts of Torture, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 21:27:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2747693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerauno/pseuds/Cerauno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the late 1990's, a younger Sherlock finds himself homeless, destitute, and in severe withdrawal from multiple drugs after being evicted from his flat in London.</p><p>At least until Mycroft intervenes, and all hell breaks loose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Absolute Zero

**Author's Note:**

> Note: This series has been on hiatus recently, after the hard drive I had the next two chapters saved to was broken during a move. However, I've been slowly re-writing the next parts, so please stay tuned.
> 
> ∙ ╌╍╌ ∙ ╌╍╌ ∙ ╌╍╌ ∙
> 
> This fic takes place in the late 1990's, approximately ten years before 'A Study in Pink', or the start of the BBC Sherlock series. This places Sherlock's estimated age in his mid-twenties and Mycroft in his early thirties.

London is, of course, known for her rather bleak and drizzly weather, but on one particular afternoon, when Mycroft Holmes heard the tinny jangle of his mobile phone ringing in his pocket, it was both frigid and torrential. In a single word; miserable.

"Yes," Mycroft answered shortly.

"Sir, I believe I may have found something, near Temple Station," said the urgent voice on the other end of the line.

" _Address?_ " Mycroft demanded, almost stumbling over the simple question in his haste.

"Err...well, it's a bit of a ways from the nearest street, but I'll wait for you there until you arrive," responded the voice, before being silenced by a sharp jab of Mycroft's thumb against the 'End/Back' button.

∙ ╌╍╌ ∙ ╌╍╌ ∙ ╌╍╌ ∙

When the black Jaguar pulled up to the kerb, the brakes screeched so loudly against the rain-slick asphalt that even Sherlock could hear it over two blocks' distance away.

 _In a hurry. How unusual,_ He thought.

Sherlock took a deep breath and pushed his hands under his armpits to warm them, and to hopefully lessen his uncontrollable tremors as a result of the frigid weather.

 _It's not even that cold out, stop being ridiculous_. He mentally hissed at himself, or at least at his disobedient body.

Glancing around, he noticed a couple of cigarette butts near his feet, burnt straight down to the filters, and quickly snatched them up, shooting them into an adjacent storm drain with practiced ease. He knew Mycroft would smell the resinous tar on his breath and see the ochre yellow stains on the fingers of his gloves, but he wasn't about to give him any additional fuel for the undoubtedly hellish argument that was to come.

He sniffed forcefully, again cursing his own body for allowing his nose to run at a time like this. It wasn't even his fault; he'd _tried_ to appeal the eviction, he'd _tried_ to convince the new landlord to give him until next month to pay the first sixty days' rent and the security deposit, and he'd bloody well _tried_ to secure just a few measly grams on highly reliable credit. What more, exactly, did his body expect him to do? He'd done everything he possibly could, but none of it had worked. Trying again at any of the previous efforts would be even more fruitless at this point. And yet his nose was still running with no signs of stopping, his diaphragm was still fluttering around in his chest and making his visible breaths shake, and his hands were numb from the near-freezing cold. But worst of all was his insufferable stomach, which had at long last ceased its incessant growling, only to begin wracking him with undulating waves of full-body _pain_ , and at increasingly short intervals. His energy levels had been ground down to an all-time low. It was so damnably maddening and inconvenient, he could very nearly scream out of frustration.

Even more so when he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, two pairs of them, stepping towards him through the puddles and mud; one obviously a man wearing a good pair of expensive leather shoes, and the other a woman wearing high-but-not- _too_ -high heels, also expensive. Judging by the pace the woman was walking at in order to keep astride with Mycroft, it had to be that posh brunette girl again.

The footsteps quickly closed in on him and soon Mycroft and a young girl-woman in a bespoke grey business suit came into view from behind the underpass wall. Sherlock felt a lazy sort of half-thrill at seeing he'd been right about Mycroft's companion—he'd been having her tag along with him a lot lately, for whatever reason. Personally, he couldn't imagine why Mycroft had suddenly picked _her_ to stick around, out of all of his many, many former assistants, though he did have to admit that there was a certain something about her...a quietly intimidating presence that he couldn't quite explain. She'd probably be gone by week's end.

Mycroft let out an enormous, furious huff of aggravation and exertion as he came to a halt only a couple of feet in front of Sherlock. Far too close for comfort—not that comfort was anywhere on Mycroft's mind just then. Quite the opposite.

"Do you have _any_ idea what it took to find you? Mummy's absolutely beside herself," He growled, still panting slightly.

"What for? It's not as if I died," Sherlock sneered, not even deigning to turn his head, let alone his eyes, towards his brother.

" _And just how were any of_ us _supposed to know that?_ " Mycroft shouted, only catching himself after he'd realized how loud he'd been. Clearing his throat, he went on at a more dignified volume.

"You get yourself evicted from the one building in London that has ever put up with your behaviour for more than a week, and then you disappear off the face of the earth entirely. What was anyone to think had happened?"

"Your confidence in my abilities of self-preservation is staggering," Sherlock muttered, wishing he had another cigarette.

Mycroft just took in a long, sharp breath through gritted teeth and turned away, collecting himself.

"Do you really think you're fooling anyone, Sherlock? Honestly, you're not even trying anymore." Mycroft finally said, quietly.

That irritated Sherlock just enough to cast a brief sidelong glare up at Mycroft, though he said nothing in response.

"I know that's why you were evicted. Even the most dim-witted and forgiving of landlords can't abide keeping hoards of illegal drugs under their roof," Mycroft added flatly.

"He was snooping around in my flat while I was out. If he hadn't deliberately invaded my privacy, he'd never have suspected a thing. I was _careful_ ," Sherlock snapped defensively.

"You left nearly two hundred grams of cocaine in your _sitting room!_ Not to mention the oxycodone in the bathroom cabinet, or the traces of crushed amphetamine tablets in the kitchen! That, Sherlock, is _anything_ but 'careful'," Mycroft spat viciously.

" _Again_ , he had no just cause to be poking around there in the first place! Had I known he would just break in—"

"He's the _landlord_ , Sherlock! If he has any reason to suspect illegal activity within his building that he could be held liable for, that is all the reason he needs to confirm it," Mycroft ground out.

"That's just it, though. I made sure to never give him reason to suspect ' _illegal activity_ '. So why would he suddenly become suspicious enough to check?"

Mycroft's face sagged into something between pity and frustrated disbelief at that. He just stood there, staring down at his brother as though he'd been told a distasteful and unamusing joke, and was waiting for an apologetic excuse.

"You told him to look in my flat," Sherlock snarled up at him.

Whatever amount of pity Mycroft may have been housing vanished in an instant as those words hit him. His face rapidly twisted back into an even more indignant scowl.

"I. Did. _Nothing_. Of the sort," He whispered with painstaking slowness.

"Why should I believe you?" Sherlock mock-laughed.

"He searched your flat because even an idiot like him could tell what was going on every time you stumbled in at dawn, so high that you couldn't even speak coherently, let alone answer the door or pay your rent!" Mycroft hollered, far past the point of caring now.

"Not to mention the marks all over you arms, or the bloody noses, or the weight loss, or the fact that you haven't paid said rent in over five months!" Mycroft went on, so angry that the gloved hand tightly clutching his umbrella handle was visibly shaking.

"We had an agreement. He knew I would pay the back-rent I owed as soon as I found a case," Sherlock sniffed, turning away again as though he weren't at all provoked.

" _You weren't looking for a case_. You haven't been looking for nearly half a year! All you ever even left your flat for was to stalk around on rooftops and to buy more _drugs_ ," Mycroft countered.

"It's not my fault nothing of interest has turned up, you can't demand more inexplicable violent crimes to occur faster than they naturally would just because rent's due. Besides, I've been doing this long enough now that the police and clients come to _me_. I haven't actively sought out a case in years," Sherlock remarked dismissively.

Mycroft went quiet again, for longer this time. After two minutes or so of irate silence, the brunette girl, who had hung back several paces away, glanced up from the PDA she'd had her eyes glued to for the entire time up until now. She didn't say anything, but kept her eyes fixed on the back of Mycroft's head with her hand hovering over the PDA's screen, motionlessly clutching the plastic stylus. The gap in the conversation stretched on painfully, until at last Mycroft's assistant shifted as if to say something, only to be beaten to the punch.

"I cannot live your life for you, Sherlock...," Mycroft began.

"Never stopped you from trying," Sherlock pointed out smartly.

"...But I will _not_ stand by idly, time and time again, and watch you destroy yourself and everything you have accomplished. Certainly not like this. It is beneath you."

Sherlock grimaced and opened his mouth to argue, but Mycroft continued on anyway.

"Just look at yourself, Sherlock. What do you think the world sees when they look at you now?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and scoffed, but a cold pain in his gut that wasn't from hunger told him he knew exactly what Mycroft was referring to, and that it was true. His already thin frame was nearly skeletal, his eye sockets sunken and his skin a sickly shade of white. His clothes were caked in mud and grime, beginning to fray at the hems, and the secondhand coat he had managed to procure was much too large for him and clashed cheaply against even his badly worn clothes underneath. If he took it and his jacket off and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, he wouldn't be able to deny that Mycroft had been right about the recent scarring to be found on the insides of his arms, as well as in a couple other more discreet places that would go unmentioned for now. And there he was, sitting aimlessly and freezing beneath a low, disused bridge to get out of the rain, with his stomach and pockets both irrefutably empty. He knew he must have looked like hell. But still, he said nothing, knowing well by now that when Mycroft said certain things a certain way, he was simply trying to bait him into responding regrettably out of anger. And no, he would not bite. Not this time.

"While you've made it apparent that you do not want to accept help from anyone else—least of all your family, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom—I still feel I must ask what is likely to be a pointless question, but a necessary one nonetheless," Mycroft rambled, the tone of his voice having returned to its typical, menacing placidity. He inhaled deeply, hesitantly, before continuing.

"...Sherlock, will you please just come home? Surely it can't be any more loathsome than _this_ ," Mycroft said, gesturing around at the underside of the leaky concrete bridge with no small amount of disgust.

"Mycroft, has it ever occurred to you that I would prefer living _here_ ," Sherlock paused to gesture around in a sarcastic imitation of his brother. "Than to ever resign myself to that suffocating holding cell of a manor that you still insist on calling our 'home'? Not all of the Crown Jewels could convince me to go back there for even a short visit."

"Oh, yes. I'd completely forgotten how poorly you were treated, growing up there. How Mummy and Father confined and abused you endlessly, never once showing you an ounce of love nor affection," Mycroft remarked nastily.

"Love and affection are wastes of both energy and limited memory space. Maudlin hangers-on of a bygone evolutionary era in which ingrained affection was the only thing that connected parents to their children. Useless now—little more than emotional weaknesses to be exploited by others, given the chance."

"A theory which I'm sure you've had ample opportunities to test."

Sherlock had to physically bite his tongue in order to keep himself from retorting— _I will not bite, I won't._ But in doing so, he couldn't help but feel petty and juvenile for allowing Mycroft's taunts to sink their hooks into him, despite his best efforts to avoid yet another tedious duel of sharpened words.

"No."

"No, what?" Mycroft asked, in the same way a patient adult might entertain the whims of a unruly child.

"No, I still don't want your help, nor do I need it, for that matter. No, I won't come 'home' with you. And no, none of what you are spewing right now will ever, _ever_ change my mind. So if you still want to _help_ me so very badly, you can go back to whatever hostile takeover that was interrupted by this quaint little manhunt and _leave me the hell alone_ ," Sherlock said with disturbing evenness, finally choosing to look his brother in the eye as he said it.

The slight twitch in the left side of Mycroft's face was so fleeting that most people would have never even noticed it flash across his features, let alone know what it meant. But of course, Sherlock knew right away. He'd seen that same twitch more times than he cared to count; it had become as familiar an occurrence when conversing with Mycroft as his older brother's scowl. It meant that he'd reached his breaking point, no longer willing to play the part of the diplomatic negotiator. The figurative envelope had been pushed clear off the edge of the metaphorical table and was now lying crumpled on the floor. Mycroft had turned a mental corner, and Sherlock knew that he was now dealing with an entirely different mindset— though which of Mycroft's countless moods it would be was still an unknown factor. 

He hated that twitch, he really did.

"I have tried to reason with you, brother dear," Mycroft began in a calmly ominous way.

"But I'm afraid you've left me little choice. I had so hoped it would not have to come to this," He said, with a sadness both genuine and forced apparent in his voice.

Sherlock squinted suspiciously back at him, trying to calculate the hidden suggestions behind Mycroft's words. Of course, comprehending his brother's true intentions remained a fine art that not even Sherlock had yet mastered—a fact which caused him a great deal of stress on a regular basis. Not least of all, in the present.

"Whatever it is that you're implying, Mycroft, I assure you that it will _not_ work. You know better than anyone exactly how far I am willing to go to evade your attempts at 'protection'," Sherlock said, very, very carefully.

"Indeed. Which is why I've gone to such lengths to guarantee that my efforts will not be wasted. And I say that with great reluctance, mind," Mycroft replied with a disconcerting loftiness.

Before Sherlock could even come up with a retort, he sensed movement from four separate directions around him; two figures located directly to his right and left sides, as well as two similar figures appearing across the dry drainage channel from him, perched like vultures on the crest of the walking path at the far side of the bridge that they were under. All of them were quite obviously armed and prepared to do the worst at a split second's notice.

"You can't be serious," Sherlock drawled, the repulsion heavy in his voice.

"I've never been more serious, Sherlock. And that, you can take to the bank."

On the last word, Mycroft made a subtle hand gesture and the four darkly clothed men began crouch-stepping steadily towards them. With their movements, Sherlock could see the flickering reflections of their gunsights pointed at him, and he knew all too well that Mycroft wouldn't have ordered them to wield weapons with empty chambers. His brother was, indeed, very serious.

In the span of mere seconds, Sherlock's eyes darted between the four separate targets—or at least the four that were visible from his current position. There could easily be more, hidden out of sight. After a cursory once-over of Mycroft and his assistant, he decided that it was very unlikely that either of them were lethally armed; hardly a relief considering he knew exactly how poor Mycroft's marksmanship was, and that the brunette girl's experience in firing a real, loaded gun at a living person was almost certainly much worse. So he instead focused on the four blackened figures, whom had all halted their approach in unison as soon as the two adjacent men atop the ridge had reached the very edge of the culvert. Still, they were terribly, worryingly close; the chance of escape nearly infinitesimal now.

_Then it's a good thing I happen to be the leading expert in all things infinitesimal._

Sherlock heaved a great sigh, letting his head roll forward in what he expected would seem like resignation. The tiniest shake of his unkempt mop of curls, as if out of frustrated surrender, was what he hoped would be the cherry atop the deceptional cake. Judging by how Mycroft's shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, it seemed convincing enough an act.

Then Sherlock slowly, ever so gradually, pushed his hands into the inner pockets of his suit jacket beneath his tattered overcoat, apparently a symbol of his submitting to the inevitable with one last bit of passive defiance, or perhaps just from the cold, and carefully rose to his feet. Head still hanging low on his shoulders, he noticed out of the corners of his eyes how the four gunmen subtly hunkered down as he moved, readying themselves.

"Fine," He huffed resentfully, setting his jaw square.

"You win, Mycroft."

Then he pressed both index fingers hard into the concealed button switches long-since sewn into the lining of his jacket, and suddenly the surrounding city block lit up in a deafening crash of explosions.

Even with his eyelids squeezed shut, Sherlock knew by the high pitched ringing in his ears that he would be blind and deaf for at least the next ten seconds or more, but still surged to his left, past the nearest and whom he had assessed to be the most distractible of the four armed men, and up and over the lip of the drainage channel, letting only the reverberations of the concrete beneath his feet and pure muscle memory guide him to safety. His blurred vision began to steady before the dizzying whine in his ears had started to fade, which he was silently grateful for, as even his deeply ingrained knowledge of every side street in London would not protect him from tripping over a wayward obstacle or being run down by a speeding car. Even still, the steady shower of rain falling from the bloated cloud above him was causing his hair to flop down over his eyes with every step he took, and was making it nearly impossible to get the traction under his feet that he desperately needed. Recognizing the entrance to a nearby alleyway, he dodged his way through the mess of bins and discarded shipping pallets at its mouth, ducking down into a full-on sprint as soon as he'd cleared the wreckage.

He'd flown past several startled members of his budding homeless network, ignoring the one boy's chummy greeting, and through a serpentine maze of side streets and corridors until he estimated his total distance traveled to have exceeded eight square city blocks. Though he was already berating himself for performing so pitifully, the insistently twanging ache coming from the right side of his chest was rapidly worsening, to the point of becoming not just alarming, but physically unbearable. A tiny, faint voice of rationality in his head had begun whispering the words, " _You must stop NOW!_ " into his mind's ears around the time he'd jumped a two meter fence several blocks back.

Finally allowing his feet to stutter to an ungainly halt, Sherlock permitted himself just enough idle time to gulp in six tremendous breaths of air. He was inhaling breath number seven as he spun back around, looking up and immediately finding the bottom of the roof access ladder bolted to the side of the building to his left. It was cut short just above the ceiling line of the first floor so that bored teenagers and transients wouldn't be able to reach it without a ladder of their own. Sherlock, however, decided that he didn't need one, and climbed up onto an empty cargo container on the other side of the alley, pressing his back up against the brick wall it was set against. Taking two more deep breaths, and pushed himself away from the wall, hard, and launched himself off of the edge of the container. He was in the air for less than two seconds, but that was more than enough time for him to calculate his velocity and airborne trajectory and then reconfirm it, just before his right hand curled around the first, slippery iron rung of the ladder and the rest of him hit the cement wall it was attached to. He managed to avoid having the wind knocked out of him, but still he hung there, dazed, for a precious few seconds before shaking his head clear and scraping his heels against the wall, slowly hauling himself up the ladder until his feet reached the bottom rung, and then practically sprinting up vertically the rest of the way.

His lungs were burning and the edges of his vision had gone dim by the time he reached the roof and immediately fell into a prone crawling position, the crown of his head just shy of the top of the low wall along the building's roofline. He then tugged off his bright blue nylon-blend coat and stuffed it up against the protruding edge of the metal ladder platform so that it was mostly hidden, then turned back around and began pulling himself across the rough surface of the roof towards the far side. If he could make it into the shadow of the slightly taller building next door, he would be practically invisible from all sides but a narrow sliver from far-west north, which would allow just enough tiii i i —

Sherlock distantly heard his own throat gasp at the same time that he registered the impact and accompanying deep sting of a very small, thin, and high speed projectile piercing the flesh of his left shoulder. His view of the rooftop ahead did somersaults, and he felt his chin crack as it hit the tar paper.

_Tranquil...izer rounds..._

He couldn't keep his eyes open, damn it all. Don't close, you _can't_ close!

_...Should have...known...._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> I've been working on this series for quite some time now, trying to get it as close to BBC Sherlock canon as possible. Comments and shares are hugely appreciated, as well as any suggestions regarding possible edits.
> 
> I can only hope that somebody out there enjoys reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Cheers!


End file.
